Like so many of you, I can’t shake the Cornell 7 from my mind. The rage feels reminiscent of the Kavanaugh hearings, watching Christine Blasey Ford testify against the appointment of one of our nation's highest official. It reminds me of Emma Sulkowiczcarrying her 50-pound mattress across Columbia’s campus back in 2014. More recently, I felt it sitting in the theater watching E. Jean Carroll’s documentary. There have been too many of these moments of profound, gut-wrenching RAGE.
As a mother of 12- and 14-year-old sons, we talked about Cornell at the dinner table last night. This wasn’t about why sexually assaulting an unconscious woman is wrong. They know that. It wasn’t even really about the bystander effect, because they know that too (though we DID talk about all of those people who allegedly saw things on their screens and said nothing and how much harder it can be to speak up when you’re part of a group, especially one with power). Instead, we talked about her. What must it have felt like to walk around campus in the days and weeks afterward? To wonder who knew? Who had seen something? Who had laughed? And what has it felt like to carry this pain for the two years since?
What does it feel like to be any Jane Doe?
Because even though this Cornell Jane Doe is the one in the news right now, we all know this is happening everywhere, it happened when we were there too. On college campuses, yes, but also in high schools, workplaces, homes and communities across our country. More than 1 in 5 American women have experienced completed or attempted rape, and nearly half have experienced some form of contact sexual violence. Every woman I know has a story. I have stories.
Was I naive to think universities would have evolved since my elder-millennial college days? Yes. Have we actually gone backwards? Sometimes it certainly feels that way.
Liz Plank @feministfabulous, reminding us all of our current situation.
And this is where I keep getting stuck. How are women supposed to trust the systems meant to protect us when those same systems have so often protected the very men accused of abusing women? We can talk about consent and respect until we’re blue in the face, but we also have to get sexual abusers out of positions of power and stop allowing institutions to protect them. We cannot trust systems that continue to make room for the very behavior they’re supposed to protect us from.
I also keep seeing posts about what we, as mothers, need to do to raise boys who respect women. YES. Obviously. I am raising two boys and I take that responsibility incredibly seriously. But this framing also pisses me off. Why is this somehow another thing for women to fix?
If you want to watch something that stopped me dead in my tracks and really drove home just how systemic this issue is, watch this.
Where are the men in this equation? The fathers? Coaches? Friends? Fraternity brothers? Where are the men calling out other men? Where are the people in power willing to put protecting women above protecting the reputation of their institution? Where are the CEOs willing to say, “Hey guys, maybe this isn’t such a great marketing idea?”
Every man who abuses a woman was once a little boy. Somewhere along the way, he learned what was acceptable. And that lesson doesn’t only come from his mother. It comes from his friends, his father, his coaches, the men he looks up to, the institutions around him and a culture that shows him what we will excuse, laugh at, cover up or look away from.
So where do we go from here? I don’t have the answer, but I know I don’t want just to be angry for a week until the next horrible story takes its place. I want to keep talking to my boys. I want the men in their lives talking to them too. I want us to read and share the stories of women who have been through this. I want us to pay attention to what our schools and universities actually do when women come forward. And I want us to vote for people who take violence against women seriously and support systems that actually protect women.
A few places to start: read and share: Roxanne Gay's Not That Bad, Chanel Miller’s Know My Name. Read Peggy Orenstein’s Boys & Sex, especially if you’re raising boys. Talk about this stuff at dinner. Send articles to the men in your life. Ask your kids what they would do if they saw something happening. Ask your schools what they are doing. VOTE. Pay attention.
And because at LF we have always believed that words should lead to action, we made something, too. Our new “Justice for Every Jane Doe” sweater will benefit RAINN, the nation’s largest anti-sexual violence organization. Wear the words, start the conversation, support the people doing this work every single day.
Justice for every Jane Doe.
xo Rachelle
